MicroDesign Plus

[ComSoft6128]

1991/92?
This uses the headline 2 and headline 5 fonts from MicroDesign Extra released by Siren Software in 1988. The font text is taken directly from the lyrics of the title track of the 1980 "Freedom of Choice" album by American new wave/electronic band Devo. (Yeah, the guys in the boilersuits and red hats.)
 

[ComSoft6128]

Loading screen for Microdesign Plus. When I get the time (!) I will load the 17K screen into Advanced Art Studio and revise the date shown from 1992 to "1992 - 2018" 

[ComSoft6128]

1991.
64K Landscape format, printed using the Star LC-10 9 pin printer.
This file consists of two mode 2 Rombo Vidi screens converted to MD format, trimmed and then merged to form one larger graphic. All background pixel material has been removed to enhance image definition.
The screen grabs used were of a television presenter who was once voted the "the most hated man on television" in the UK due to his smug TV persona and the regular humiliation of members of the public in his "Candid Camera" style programmes.
BUT!..........27 years later and by the power of Wikipedia....... it turns out that he raised nearly £100 million for charity and off screen was quite different from his professional TV personality.
Which I hadn't a clue about when the file below was made.

[ComSoft6128]

From 12/6/18.
"Now this is a puzzle. This poster hung above my desk for over a decade as an aide-memoire. The top table shows the predefined key commands from Arnors Utopia Rom that were/are very useful.
The middle and bottom tables show other predefined keys from another Rom or Roms and no longer appear to work. I thought at first some of them might operate from command mode in Protext but no joy. Also they are a mix of Amsdos and CPM commands which seems more than a little unusual.
Does anyone recognise these key combinations or have any ideas?"

Update 1/10/18.
Mystery now solved courtesy of the Brittania Rombox repaired by Bryce.
The PKEY function is located on the Maxidos Rom and gives access to all the commands listed in tables 2 and 3. I'm not sure if these commands were ever part of the original Maxidos or were added later but they can be accessed from Amsdos and also from within the DES Rom menu.

[ComSoft6128]

1993.
This is an example of reversed type (ink inversion) and rotated text. The text has been rotated 180 degrees and uses one of the font sets from the original (1988) release of MicroDesign by Siren Software.

[ComSoft6128]

Letter from 1991.
Sylvester the Cat discovers the CPC 6128.

64K Portrait format, printed using the Star LC-10 printer.
Mode 2 screen grabbed from one of the "Looney Tunes" cartoons.
The speech bubble was created by using the circle and triangle functions on the design page and then removing the background pixels contained within them. The text is the standard MD font and each individual character can be treated as a small graphic and moved anywhere on the design page.

[ComSoft6128]

First (p)review of Microdesign from Siren Software - December 87/January 88 edition (issue 28) of Amstrad Action.

DTP on the CPC - page 1.

[ComSoft6128]

DTP on the CPC - page 2.

[ComSoft6128]

Letter page from May 1988 edition (issue 32) of Amstrad Action.

Unhappy/irate MicroDesign user responding to the review in issue 28.
"DTP or not DTP" - this user makes a number of accurate and valid points in his letter.

Page 1.

[ComSoft6128]

Page 2.

[ComSoft6128]

1991.
Short letter to a friend.
64K Portrait format, printed using the Star LC-10.
Can't remember where the graphic at the top of the page came from, probably converted Stop Press clip art.
Cassette and Mixtapes - remember them?

[ComSoft6128]

1990/91?
Four Rombo Vidi screens converted to MD format. The top two come from a documentary on Punk and New Wave music, the bottom left from a documentary on the English civil war and the bottom right is, well....you know.
Top left screen is Hugh Cornwell, then the lead singer in the rock band "The Stranglers" and the top right screen is a headline from the magazine New Musical Express and probably dates from the early eighties.
I often printed digitised images to compare the screen and hard-copy versions, what looked good on the CPC screen was often not quite the same on paper.
The top right and bottom left images are full screen conversions, the top left and bottom right images have been trimmed to fit the MicroDesign page. A standard screen file when converted to MD format covered 25% of the page.
64K Landscape format, printed using the Star LC-10 printer.

[ComSoft6128]

1991.
One for workaholics everywhere............
Humorous poster for office use.
64K Landscape format, printed using the Star LC-10 9 pin printer.
This design uses two of the large font sets from MicroDesign Extra released by Siren Software in 1988.

[ComSoft6128]

1993/94?
One for dog lovers everywhere....
Stop Press clip art from Goldmark Systems converted to MD format.
Draft quality.

[Gryzor]

This last post with the clipart reminded me of the ads I was seeing in ST Format ca 94 or 95 (publishing year, I just read them a few months back), by which time the ST was all but dead but people kept pushing "600MB of games and apps!" that consisted 95% of fillers. It seemed quite interesting to me that there were ads about PD disks containing sets of such clipart - 'dogs', 'women', 'dinosaurs' etc. I guess it was *something* back then!

[ComSoft6128]

That's right Gryzor.
I had completely forgotten about that, not just the Atari but the Amiga and the PC as well. Back then I used to buy the main mags for each of these machines to see if there were any programs/hardware that could be "borrowed" and adapted for the CPC.
All of the magazines carried adverts for "PD" disks that looked slightly dubious - "Dodgy Data Done Daily" as opposed to the top quality programs you were supposed to get. No doubt some were good but I think there was certainly a lot of filler there.

[ComSoft6128]

1993.
Sanitized letter to a friend. This is a mix of clip art from the PCW (the hand) and CPC Stop Press (the angry man and the devil) converted to MD format.
64K Landscape format, printed using  the Star LC-10.

[ComSoft6128]

1989.
64K Landscape format, printed using the Amstrad DMP 2160 printer.

This humorous poster was made in response to a friends suggestion that I was a "Big-head".
Back then, as I possessed an Ego bigger than the Sun, he may very well have been correct.
I'll let you decide...........

[ComSoft6128]

Improvements - Part 1.

This is a letter that I sent to Rombo Productions and their response.
Considering that MD wasn't even their program I have to say the customer support provided was superb. Some other CPC companies of the time could have learned a lesson from them.

A little info is here:

http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Rombo_Productions

And here:

http://www.stone-oakvalley-studios.com/0009_14_dashboard_index.php

[ComSoft6128]

1991.
Newsnight design (previously seen in the thread) under construction. The MicroDesign default filing option loaded converted 17K screens or other graphic files into the centre of the A4 page. This saved a great deal of time when fixing a file to the page - no need to count the number of pixels from the boundary of the converted screen to the left/right or top/bottom of the A4 page. Although this was the default it was easy using Ctrl/Shift and cursor keys to move the converted screen anywhere on the MD page before finally loading the file.